cricket30 Review of The Burglar on the Roof

The Burglar on the Roof (I) (1898)

Everyone's on the roof--except the fiddler!!

[6/10 · 25 February 2013]

The alleged robber opens a odd-looking storage locker on a tenement roof in a big city and starts pulling out clothes (like a coat and work-shirt). A lady who is working on her laundry comes up from behind and grabs his ankle; her fellow crone arrives an instant later and whacks his back with a broom, while a third woman stands in reserve to the left. Meanwhile, a guy sneaks around the storage locker from the right and is quickly decked by the alleged wrong-doer. A second and third man show up from nowhere and a general me-lee ensues. Amid this mayhem a policeman shows up from the right, but merely looks on as the broom lady starts whacking the first guy again (maybe he's her husband, trying to find her secret hiding place for "pin money" and booze?). At any rate, this is the point at which the director ran out of film, forcing the audience to come to its own interpretation, as was generally the case with these Edison flicks from the 1800s. For those tired of endless fire runs, this probably was a nice change of pace in those days.